


Tell Me the Truth About Love

by landofspices



Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Allan-a-Dale POV, Angst, Awkward Sexual Situations, Comfort Sex, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Praise Kink, Sadism, Stockholm Syndrome, Unrequited Guy/Marian, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 06:14:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6842185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/landofspices/pseuds/landofspices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during Marian's time in the Forest after Edward of Knighton's death. Guy is not taking her absence well, and the Sheriff is enjoying his unhappiness. Allan would really like to alleviate some of that suffering... </p><p>Please note that only Guy, Alan and Vaisey appear in the fic, and it is Guy-sympathetic, so not a great choice to read if you hate Guy. It's in line with canon, however, insofar as Robin and Marian are together in Sherwood. </p><p>[tw: abusive Vaisey/Guy in the background, as in all my RH stories; this fic mentions the physical aftermath of a rape and includes one coercion/abuse scene which is only mildly sexual.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me the Truth About Love

**Author's Note:**

> I've been so sick all week and trying to cheer myself up by working on this, my first Gullan fic! ahaha. New vistas. I love Allan.
> 
> On tumblr [here](http://distinctgoldcalling.tumblr.com) if you want to say hello or DM with me about Guy's beauty. ;)

  
_Is its singing at parties a riot?_  
_Does it only like Classical stuff?_  
_Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?_  
_O tell me the truth about love._

— W. H. Auden

 

Allan has eyes to see. He wonders later if the Sheriff meant him to overlook them: it would be his way, wouldn’t it? To put on a show, as he loves hangings, as he loves drownings. The door of the bird chamber doesn’t usually stand open. It’s a clear, rain-washed morning. What a day, Allan can fancy the Sheriff thinking. What a day for fun. 

He halts there at the door on almost silent feet, stock still. I learnt a lot from you, Robin. That's what Robin does: he comes into Allan’s head at all the wrong moments. Marian is three days gone. To the nuns, to find holy harbour; to Sherwood, where they won't have him back; to Robin's arms, not Guy's. To the devil, like enough.

No, no: he doesn't mean that. She's a bitch when she wants to be, bright as a blade. And a good woman, fresh in her grief. Of course he never knew who fathered him. The less you have to lose the less you sorrow for, they said that somewhere. 

Allan's the one who has to watch Guy lose what colour he ever had, whiter every daybreak. Watch him pick at his food like a girl with green sickness, the shadows under those pretty, black-fringed eyes getting darker. It seems a disproportionate misery, given how sparing Marian is with her favours. She can hardly be called nice to him, most of the time. Unless she has good reason.

When Allan set up a merry singing in the courtyard with two of the more personable guards, Guy threw a bucket at him. He is plainly not to be cheered, though Allan thinks he is less angry than he pretends to be: it was at least an empty bucket.

The second evening, Allan caught him in the stables, leaning against his horse. His face was pressed to the animal's long mane, his shoulders trembling. Allan gave due consideration to several things he might say, but decided that discretion might, on this occasion, be the better part of valour. A saying beloved by his late companion in arms, Much, Earl of Bonchurch. He left him in the warm, rustling reek of the place, where his small sounds were nearly covered by the shifting of the horses in their stalls.

Of course he already knows about Guy's nightmares. Picked that up inside a week; you'd have to be a halfwit not to. Considering Marian doesn't sleep in his bed, or anywhere near him, it's hard to see why her absence should make everything worse, but it has. There's no denying that. Guy looks quite ill when he presents himself each morning and Allan can’t help wondering if he’s lying awake, missing her. He feels sorry, but also scornful. When he sees Guy flinching under the Sheriff’s lashing tongue, though, his scorn drains away like scummy water.

If someone had told him, back when he was with Robin, that he’d be watching Guy of Gisborne get it in the neck every day, he’d have thought it sounded like just what he wanted. It isn’t any fun when it happens.

Allan’s no innocent, Holy Mother knows, but he can’t immediately make sense of what he sees through the partly opened door of the bird chamber. He’s had what he likes to think of as an interesting life: makes it sound near enough good, doesn’t it? It’s not as if he doesn’t know about Guy and the Sheriff. It’s close to common knowledge in Nottingham Castle, with everyone too scared to say a word aloud in case Guy — or worse, the Sheriff — hears them. Walls have ears, as they say. The Sheriff does have a peculiar knack of hearing what he shouldn’t and arriving round a corner at the worst possible moment: accusing him of sodomy would do the job nicely.

Truth is, he hates Guy sometimes. For taking him away from Robin and the others. Especially from Will. He lies there in the warm with a full belly and imagines creeping into Guy’s bedchamber where he lies in a restless sleep, and giving him a taste of his own medicine. What would it be like to have those big blue eyes look up at him, full of fear? Allan’s seen the Sheriff make him weep, more than once, and he thinks of doing the same.

You made me come here, Guy. Where I have everything I wanted, and I am never truly cold or hungry any more.

Allan knows exactly what Guy’s face looks like after a vicious blow has snapped it back, the naked hurt there. And he knows Guy’s weak points, after seeing him fight Robin time and again. Always had an eye for noticing that kind of thing, Allan has: it’s useful if you’re on the small side, not a lot of muscle to heave people about with. Guy isn’t exactly awful at fighting, but he’s no Robin. He lacks Robin’s fire, his dauntlessness. You never know which way Robin will move next, in combat. Will always said that it was going to the Holy Land taught him more than most Englishmen know, and he has the talent to put it to use, besides. But for Guy the chaotic fights the Outlaws prefer — how else are they to compete against his superior numbers? — are distinctly flustering. In Robin’s camp they suspected this, and jeered at him for it; the truth of the matter became painfully clear as soon as Allan was riding at his side.

Besides the question of temperament, he has weak ankles, and he is tender-footed. Allan has seen him wince after standing for hours at the Sheriff’s side on the hard, cold stone floors of the castle. When he is hating Guy, he pictures himself striking him on the ankle, and the frail bone breaking. Then you’d be sorry you made me sneak around for you, he thinks, squeezing his eyes shut. It would hurt you worse than anything Robin’s done.

And when he is in a less choleric temper, he thinks of peeling off Guy’s stockings and soothing the pain from his pale feet, pressing his lips to the ankle bone gently. The question is, would Guy hang him, or just hit him?

I hate you, he thinks, lying on his soft pallet. It’s true, Guy’s given him a lot. But he took a lot away, didn’t he, it was no easy bargain.

There are times when he thinks being that man’s catamite is punishment enough. They don’t speak of it. Once he saw bathwater being carried out of Guy’s chamber, and it was richly bloodstained. The next day, Guy did not appear until late in the morning and the Sheriff, for a wonder, made no protest.

When Guy did come, he was wan and unsteady on his feet. He ate nothing all day and winced as he sat at table. That was the only time Allan broke their silence. They went out into the courtyard together at dusk and as if the near-dark made it safe to speak, he said, “Are you all right, Guy?”

Guy walked away from him as if he hadn’t heard. His step was imperfect, but he never altogether halted, not even to get angry.

All the same, Allan knew a brush-off when he saw it, and it wasn’t as if that sort of thing happened every day. Usually Guy was well able to ride his horse and charge around Sherwood, looking for Robin.

When he looks through the door of the bird chamber, he sees Guy sitting in a chair by the window and the Sheriff leaning over him with his arms around him. Guy is enfolded by those arms and he is weeping, or he has been weeping, or he is about to weep: he’s making little tear-choked noises. His face is hidden against the Sheriff’s chest; only his ruffled hair is showing, with the Sheriff’s fingers combing through it.

“It’s really — safer, when she isn’t here,” the Sheriff says softly.

Allan sees Guy’s head nod a little under the Sheriff’s fingers.

“I won’t let you get too lonely.” He strokes back Guy’s curls. “You know that.”

Even from the far side of the chamber, Allan can hear Guy swallowing mucus, and the sob that follows.

“Hush,” the Sheriff says. “Don’t be childish, Guy.” He pulls at a curl. “You can’t always have what you want in life, now, can you? You ought to know that by now.” For a moment his eyes move around the room and Allan thinks, it must be on purpose, it must be. It can’t be, but it must be. He backs away, silent not by chance but by design, this time. He doesn’t want to see any more, but he thinks he can hear Guy’s tears all the way down the passage, all the way down the stairs. Until he is outside in the fresh morning air, departing from them.

That night he goes into Guy’s chamber, very late, after the drinking stops. Allan is not drunk because he doesn’t particularly like the guards. They’re jovial enough — he can get along in any company, he has learnt to be good at that — but he misses Will and the others too much to care for their stories and jokes every night. They are not his friends.

The thing is, they’re not Guy’s friends either. When Guy doesn’t join them, their humour turns frequently and unkindly to him; when he does, the atmosphere is awkward. You’re no Robin Hood, Allan has thought, more than once, eyeing his master’s shy, shuttered face. Why don’t you talk to them? Make a jest? Guy hasn’t the knack of it; he takes himself far too seriously.

When Allan opens the chamber door, Guy is already in bed, lying on his side, curled in a blanket. He’s telling the beads of his rosary in nervous fingers and his eyes are wide, blue: he looks somehow very young. Allan sits on the edge of the bed and Guy’s hands and lips stop moving. For a moment they are both quite silent. 

“Look,” Allan says at last, trying to sound reasonable and not like a mother hen. “I’m worried, see.” He puts out a hand to stroke Guy’s heavy hair back from his face and finds it startlingly damp and soft to his touch. Guy has washed before getting into bed. But he has no time to appreciate it because Guy flinches under his touch and his eyes close tightly.

Well, Allan thinks. He hasn't hit me or called the guards, but it’s not encouraging, is it? “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

He isn’t sure how to go on. I didn’t mean to touch you? But he did mean to, and he’d do it again, although he drew his hand back when Guy flinched. I didn’t mean to scare you? Guy would probably cut out his tongue for saying that aloud, even if it’s the truth. Or at least have his tongue cut out: he’s noticed Guy doesn’t exactly do the cutting, and he isn’t near as fond of bloodshed as the Sheriff would like him to be.

In the end he can’t think of a good way to finish the sentence, so he just says he’s sorry again, and leaves it at that.

The blue eyes open, and they're wet. Guy’s mouth moves, trembles. He rubs his hand furiously over his eyes, gulps against tears, then says in a tight, hurried voice, “Do that again. Please, Allan. Do it again.”

So Allan does. He strokes Guy’s hair, first to the left of his brow, which is uppermost since he is lying on his right side. And then across the top. He coaxes Guy with his hand to turn his head to the right a little, so that his right cheek is pressed to the pillow. Allan strokes thick dark hair from the top of his hair down to his nape where the curls cluster. He pushes them carefully aside there, and strokes the skin beneath with the pads of his fingers. He hears Guy’s breathing thicken, and he stills his hand.

Guy looks at him, with that wide, brilliant gaze. After a while he says unsteadily, “I really miss her.”

“I know,” Allan says. He feels like saying, do you think I’m lack-witted, Guy? But he doesn’t say it, he’s kinder than that.

“Do you think she’ll ever come back?”

“Who knows?” He keeps his voice carefully light. “Maybe she’ll take a fancy to the nuns. All that praying, up half the night — can’t say I fancy it, but Marian, always a bit hard to predict —”

Guy swallows and Allan feels, all of a sudden, like a bad person. Worse than if he’d really done any of those things to Guy that he sometimes thinks about doing. He burnt down her house, he reminds himself. She could have gone back to Knighton, couldn’t she? But it’s not there any more because he up and torched it. You might be pitying altogether the wrong person, Allan-a-Dale. It’s hard to believe that when it’s Guy’s bed he’s sitting on, Guy’s blanket soft under his bare forearm: Guy’s skin, softer still, against his unmoving fingers.

“Look,” he says, “Stop fretting, Guy. Way to an early grave, that is.” He slips his hand lower, under the edge of Guy’s open-necked shift. His chest is startlingly soft. Allan smiles, and it’s his best saucy smile, the work of years. “Let’s take your mind off things,” he says, his hand brushing a nipple and finding it peaked, budded. So Guy is roused, although when Allan looks up from the bump of his hand under the shift to Guy’s face, he finds him staring back wide-eyed.

Guy looks confused, as if he hardly understands what Allan is doing. A pink flush stains his pale cheeks, and his mouth is slightly open.

“I’ll go if you want,” Allan says, moving his hands away from Guy, keeping his voice low. It’s not encouraging to see how bewildered Guy looks by the whole thing, although it’s better than summoning the guards and ordering a hanging for one at first light the next day.

Guy says, “Don’t. I — I’ll—” He sits up in one fluid movement, and then he is on the floor. So quick that Allan saw the clear shape of his prick under his shift and hose only for an instant. Now he kneels in front of Allan and his long fingers are unfastening Allan’s breeches.

This is bloody unexpected. Allan’s prick was already half-stiffened by the pleasure of touching Guy’s hairless chest: its skin so delicate and the muscles beneath so strong. Now Guy is getting his prick out, all the while looking up at him with those lost blue eyes, set between black lashes. How can he look so all-at-sea, when they are in his own bedchamber? God knows; the devil knows. One of them has him in pay. Allan is aching, and Guy’s lovely, sinning mouth opens wide. Closes over him.

It’s not the first time Allan’s been sucked by a man. He knows enough to know Guy is very, very good at this: it’s not a thought, but a current of feeling in the green, fast-flowing river that is his body. He knows the trick of it, this one. He feels Guy’s throat caving around him and thrusts into it. And he keeps looking, looking, into the blue eyes whenever they glance up at him, wet now with involuntary tears. By turns they are dreaming and flat. He has never noticed quite how pretty Guy’s mouth is before. His body swells, tightens. He expects Guy to turn his head away now, but he doesn’t. He swallows as Allan spills into his mouth, swallows all.

Allan is heavy with pleasure, but he won’t let Guy stay on the floor like that, kneeling there like that, as if he's been discarded. “Come on,” Allan says. “Guy, come on. Let me.” He pulls him gently upright, sliding his hands eagerly up Guy’s trembling legs to pull at his black hose. But at the same moment that Guy makes a wordless unhappy noise in his throat, and Allan feels the wetness betraying Guy, declaring that he has spent in his clothes like a boy.

Oddly he does not even want to laugh. It draws out of him a new tenderness. He cannot think what, in sucking him, was delightful enough to cause that, but he pulls Guy closer and puts his arms around his waist. 

“Don’t you worry,” he says. It’s the voice he uses for girls, works a treat, but Guy isn’t to know that. “You’re lovely, Guy. Lovely.” He strokes his back, pats him, holds him still and steady. Don’t cry again, he thinks. Not after that. Don’t ask me about Marian now. He makes his hands slow and assured, as he can make them deft and quick — almost invisible — when he needs to. He wants them to talk for him, to say things like, I'm not going to make a mockery of you. I'm not going to torment you. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm more than you deserve, but even so. Even so. 

Guy lets Allan hold him. It seems like a long time, and Allan hears no sounds except their breathing. He hears Guy’s roughen and then steady. Now it seems the danger of tears is past. He lets go and carefully pulls down Guy’s hose to the knees, then looks away like the prude he certainly isn’t, but he thinks Guy might be, while Guy takes them off, washes under his shift, changes it for a clean one. He gets back into bed and Allan thinks how tired he looks, almost translucent in the guttering candlelight. 

He leans over and kisses Guy once on the mouth, once on the brow. Guy’s lips are soft, like all his skin. This might be a good moment to suggest that if Guy changes his mind about this or feels embarrassed in the morning, he still shouldn’t hang Allan. But he can’t bring himself to say anything, looking into the drowsy eyes staring up at him. This might be the worst choice he’s made in his life, and he knows it. There’s no going back.

Allan says, “I’ll stay — not for long, just till you drop off. It’s all right, I won’t nick anything. Your clothes don’t fit me properly, anyway.” He grins down at Guy and gets a sleepy smile back, so he risks something else he’s wanted to try and takes one of Guy’s hands between both of his. He holds it, traces the long fingers, strokes the back of it: delicate veins; strong, narrow bones. He lifts it to his mouth and kisses it, like a woman’s hand. He’s seen Guy do it to Marian.

“Go to sleep,” he says. “Go on. I’ll look after you.”

**Author's Note:**

> ...lololol. so, I planned this and then realised that in both the first Marian/Guy and the first Gullan fics, I'd made poor Guy come in his clothes. SORRY GUY BBY. I do think this trope is effective for the character because he's so hyperemotional and often literally uncontrolled/out of control, so it's a sexual translation of that. But I promise I will one day write fic where this does not occur. :D 
> 
> {eta: RA really did say he had weak ankles; it's not just something I made up.}


End file.
